


Bear

by saltandrockets



Series: I Don't Want Love [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: M/M, Mpreg, Soft Kylux, Trans Character, Trans Hux, Trans Male Character, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-14
Updated: 2016-06-14
Packaged: 2018-07-14 22:35:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7193663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltandrockets/pseuds/saltandrockets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Captured by the Resistance, Hux lies about being pregnant to avoid immediate execution. There's only one problem: It turns out not to be a lie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bear

**Author's Note:**

> kink meme fill. original prompt [here](www.tfa-kink.dreamwidth.org/4613.html?thread=10145285#cmt10145285).
> 
> blanket content warning for this fic, which focuses on a trans man’s pregnancy. there’s not a lot of graphic detail (about anything, really), but if this fic starts to make you feel weird/uncomfortable/etc, feel free to click that back arrow. read safely, friends!
> 
> before I wrote this fic, I tried to do a little research about trans male pregnancy. unfortunately, there’s not a ton of hard data on the subject at this time, but it’s generally acknowledged that sometimes, trans men on testosterone who aren’t using birth control are surprised by accidental pregnancies. it turns out that just because you’re not menstruating doesn’t necessarily mean you’re not ovulating. biology is weird like that.
> 
> that said, I’m not a trans man myself, and I’m no expert. I tried to handle the subject matter thoughtfully and respectfully, but I probably screwed up somewhere along the line. I apologize in advance for any big blunders.
> 
> finally, for the purposes of this fic, I refer to Hux by the largely fanon-accepted given name of Brendol. if and when canon contradicts that, this fic will be edited to reflect his canon name.
> 
>  **edit:** okay, I quibbled about whether I would actually edit the fic to reflect Hux's canon name (to the point of even writing a note here to say that I wouldn't do it), but I finally realized I was just being lazy and that it really wouldn't take that much effort to make the changes. so I have finally edited this fic the way I should've in the first place! took me long enough!

_well, we're not scared of making caves / or finding food for him to eat / we're terrified of one another / and terrified of what that means  
__—_ "[Bear](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvZeJUe1q10)," The Antlers

\--

General Armitage Hux does not believe in pointless sacrifice. He does not believe in glorious death. He does not believe in going down with guns blazing as a last show of defiance in the face of his enemies.

He believes in the First Order. He believes in the singular truth that is power. And more than all of those things, more than anything else, he believes in himself.

And so, when his options are, one, go down fighting and bravely martyr himself for the sake of First Order propaganda, and two, surrender calmly and accept an almost certain on-the-spot execution with the dignity that befits his rank, he chooses option three: none of the above.

The sounds of fighting and blaster fire have finally died down. Huddled in the relative shelter of a pile of rubble, surrounded by Resistance forces, with no remaining backup and only a single blaster to his name, Hux knows the battle is over for him. Smoke burns his nose and throat with every breath. He can see the distant red glow of fire under a dark sky. This village will be a blackened, burned-out shell by morning.

Hux considers the Resistance and their leadership. He knows Leia Organa only by reputation, but he’s confident that she won’t execute him without a trial. She values democracy, due process, all that nonsense. If Hux can only live long enough to pass into her custody, he’ll have at least a few weeks to formulate an escape plan, maybe even a few months, depending on the amount of red tape the Resistance is prepared to wade through and how much they intend to publicize the proceedings.

But that will only happen if he makes it out of here alive.

“I’m going to throw my blaster to you,” Hux shouts. A moment passes, and he pitches the weapon over the top of the crumbling stone wall. “I am otherwise unarmed. Do you hear me?”

No answer. He didn’t really expect one. They probably assume he’s lying and has another blaster tucked away somewhere. Even if they believe him, that probably won’t stop them from firing once he reveals himself—and he can only crouch here for so long before their patience runs out and they come for him. So what is he supposed to do?

An idea strikes him. It’s absurd, really. He almost dismisses it. But he’s out of options, and he can’t stall much longer. Hux takes a breath.

“I am unarmed,” he calls again, enunciating clearly. “I am also pregnant.”

“What?” comes a voice he doesn’t recognize, sounding shocked.

“So you _can_ hear me,” Hux yells, more irritably than he’d meant to. It will do him no good to antagonize them now. He exhales slowly through his nose. “I’ll repeat. My name is General Armitage Hux, of the First Order. I am unarmed. I am pregnant. I’m surrendering myself to the Resistance, on the condition that you hold your fire, and that I have the opportunity to speak with General Organa.” 

A long minute passes. He hears voices, too low and distant to make out.

Finally, someone shouts: “We’ll consider your proposal. In the meantime, don’t make any sudden movements, or we’ll blow you to hell.”

“Understood,” Hux calls, pleasantly surprised. That’s a better reaction than he had expected. He settles against the stone wall to wait and begin planning his next move.

Death isn’t an option. Not for him. He has too much left to do.

 

\--

 

In all honesty, Hux is a little shocked when it works. His announcement is so disconcerting and unprecedented that, ultimately, the commanding officer agrees to take him into custody first and sort the rest out later.

Within hours, Hux is handcuffed to a narrow, white-sheeted bed in the medbay of some unknown Resistance base. Pale blue privacy curtains separate him from the rest of the medbay, and no less than three blasters are aimed at him at any given moment. All things considered, he feels surprisingly calm—blasters aside, he’s fairly certain that he is in no immediate danger.

He was stripped of his greatcoat and uniform jacket first thing, and then thoroughly searched for hidden weapons. Once that tediousness was finished, a doctor was finally brought in—a tall, strongly-built human woman with pale hair and dark eyes.

Hux has a few superficial injuries from the battle, which have been already been treated, but he has no illusions about the real purpose of this visit. He’s here so his story can be either confirmed or debunked.

At first glance, it’s easy to take him for a typical human male, the statistical average. Some initial skepticism is to be expected. Keeping that in mind, Hux submits to the indignity of the physical exam, to prove that he possesses the anatomy to support his claims.

It doesn’t take long to convince the doctor, at least—life, in its infinite variations, and all that. Thus satisfied, she finally draws his blood.

She seems loathe to touch him, even with her gloved hands, and speaks to him no more than absolutely necessary. He suspects that has more to do with his reputation as a mass-murderer than anything so mundane as his gender.

Sitting there on the edge of the bed, watching the little machine analyzing his blood sample, Hux knows he will shortly be proved a liar. But it doesn’t really matter. He’s already gotten what he wanted. Now that he’s here, a prisoner of the Resistance, they’ll pump him for information, put him on trial, and eventually dispose of him, either by throwing him in prison or putting him in front of a firing squad.

And in the meantime, he will formulate his own plan to get out of this thrice-damned mess. As long as he has time, he has a chance.

When the machine beeps, the doctor consults her datapad, which has apparently received a copy of the results.

In the back of Hux’s mind, he’s debating whether he can convincingly claim that he miscarried without realizing in the last week or so. Probably not worth the effort, he decides, since nobody would believe him, anyway.

And then the doctor’s eyebrows arch. “Oh,” she says, in a completely unprofessional tone. She glances over at Hux, who suddenly feels his stomach drop to somewhere around his knees. It’s not a feeling he’s used to. “Well, now I’ve seen everything.”

 

\--

 

Hux’s cell is much nicer than he would’ve expected: a clean, whitewashed room with a narrow cot anchored in the wall, a little table bolted to the floor, two lightweight metal chairs, and a stainless-steel toilet in the corner. He allows himself to be marched into the cell without a fuss. There would be no use in fighting at this point. Nobody straps him down for torture, and nobody beats him senseless. Which isn’t to say that won’t happen later—it just isn’t happening now.

Instead, two soldiers chain him hand and foot to the table, so he can only move a few inches in any direction while seated. Only when they’re finished does General Organa appear.

Well, that explains it. It’s a little gratifying, in a way: Even now, unarmed and outnumbered, the Resistance considers him enough of a threat to warrant such precautions when he’s in the presence of their precious general. Hux is almost flattered.

Organa gestures to the soldiers, who reluctantly slip out of the cell, shutting the door behind them. For a moment, she just looks him up and down, before she finally takes a seat across the table from him.

“I hope I didn’t shock your physician too badly,” Hux says dryly. It’s vital that he take the lead here, that he show her that his identity isn’t a weak spot to be exploited. He isn’t ashamed of himself, not for that, never for that.

“A misunderstanding,” Organa says, without missing a beat. “Your status isn’t common knowledge.”

“Why would it be? Medical records are sealed for a reason. Do you advertise your anatomy, General?”

She pretends not to hear him. “I knew your father,” she says, her tone almost conversational. “We crossed paths from time to time, anyway. I must say, I’m a little surprised. He didn’t strike me as a particularly… _understanding_ man.”

He wasn’t, Hux thinks. But he had always wanted a son, an heir to carry on his name and legacy, and with every year that passed, it became more apparent that Hux was to be an only child. At thirteen, after much contemplation, Hux announced that he was, in fact, a boy—and his father chose to see it as an opportunity, a means to an end.

And so Hux became his father’s son, Armitage Hux. From that point on, the whole extended family has steadfastly pretended to forget that he was ever known by any other name. It suits Hux just fine. He is who he was always supposed to be.

“Is that really what you want to discuss?” Hux says. “My relationship with my father?”

“Did you have something else in mind?”

He shrugs imperiously. “Somehow, I expected you to be more interested in my knowledge of the First Order than in my personal matters.”

“We’ll get to that, I’m sure,” Organa says, looking unimpressed. She pauses for a moment, studying him again. Then her eyes widen a fraction—not in surprise, exactly, but in sudden understanding. “Ah. I see why you’re so eager to stay away from the subject. You didn’t know.”

“Know what?” Hux asks, for once in his life feigning ignorance.

“When you were captured,” Organa says, “you said you were pregnant to avoid being shot on sight. Isn’t that correct? You were stalling for time. And when the blood test came back positive, you were as shocked as any of us.” Her mouth twists into a smug little smile. “You got a little more than you bargained for, didn’t you, General?”

Hux says nothing, just looks at her in stony silence. He can feel his pulse in the back of his throat, but he refuses to let it show.

“Here’s how this is going to work,” Organa tells him at last, folding her arms onto the table. “It’s very simple. We have questions about the First Order—their numbers, their weapons and resources, their bases and strategies. You have information that can help us end this war and prevent more pointless bloodshed. When the time comes for you be tried for your crimes against the galaxy, your cooperation will be taken into account—”

“So perhaps I can slave in a spice mine instead of face a public execution?” Hux almost laughs. Whatever promises are made, whatever intel he gives up, he seriously doubts that the Resistance will let him live. “And all I have to do is commit treason. A tempting offer.”

“It would be a better fate than you deserve,” she says coldly.

“And if I don’t cooperate, what then? Extended torture? Enhanced interrogation techniques? That would be rather banal of you,” Hux says. He resists the urge to sneer, but just barely. “And as we’ve established, I’m in a somewhat delicate condition. I’m not sure my health would permit it.”

“It’s strange,” Organa says. “Not to mention hypocritical. A man like you, leaning on our basic decency. You murdered billions of beings, and yet you have the audacity to expect mercy—”

“Not for myself,” Hux says crisply. He doesn’t have to lay it on any thicker than that; she catches his meaning, pressing her lips together in what looks like annoyance.

“For the time being, you won’t be harmed.” She says it grudgingly, like it costs her something. “But I wonder if someone who’s committed the atrocities you have can truly care for anything, even your own child.”

Hux meets her fierce gaze without flinching. He can almost _feel_ how much she despises him—and, oddly, that bolsters him a bit. He smiles, with a hint of teeth. “I suppose we’ll find out together, won’t we?”

 

\--

 

In all the time he’s known the man, Hux has never wanted to strangle Kylo Ren more than he does now.

When he’s alone in his cell that night, the full gravity of the situation finally catches up to him, hitting him like a punch to the chest. His predicament has just become infinitely more complicated, and he really, really wants to blame Ren.

It takes two, of course. Hux doesn’t deny his own part in this mess. In fact, between the two of them, he’s actually more at fault—it was Hux who waved away the notion of using a barrier during penetrative sex, thinking there was no need. _I don’t have a cycle,_ he’d assured Ren, so long ago. _I haven’t bled in years._

He still wants to strangle Ren—better yet, choke him to the brink of unconsciousness, let him revive himself just a little bit, and then choke him again. That, at least, would make Hux feel a little better.

He keeps circling back to how it shouldn’t be possible. Hux has spent more than half his life on hormone therapy. Then again, he went through puberty before he transitioned, and the only surgical alteration had been to his chest. He retained all the necessary equipment for childbearing—not that he’d ever thought he’d use it. Until now, he hadn’t even thought it all still worked.

Children have never been part of Hux’s plan. If he’d known he was pregnant before his capture, he would’ve terminated it immediately and felt glad to be rid of the thing. He is a general with a war to win, and the last thing he needs is a child.

But he needs this one.

When asked how far along he was, Hux was forced to admit that he didn’t know. He had no previous cycle to go on, so the doctor had ordered a scan. It was a noninvasive procedure, just a medidroid slowly passing its scanner over his abdomen. Based on the size of the fetus, the doctor estimated that he was about eight weeks pregnant.

Hux never saw the scan himself; the image was only projected onto the doctor’s datapad. She didn’t offer to show it to him, and he didn’t ask. He had no desire to see the thing inside him. Just the thought of it was unsettling enough. At this stage, it probably looked more like a frog than anything else, an alien creature feeding off him.

How could he have missed all the signs? It’s stupidly obvious in hindsight. It explains so much about the last few weeks—the waves of nausea, the sensitivity to smell, the disproportionate fatigue. Hux had meant to drop by medbay for an exam, but he kept putting it off. There just never seemed to be time.

Looking back, he doesn’t know what he’d thought was going on with his body, really, only that it had never once occurred to him that he could be pregnant. Some tactician.

Lying back on the cot, he tries to calculate when he conceived. It would’ve been on board the _Finalizer_ , a little more than two months ago, in the days before Ren slipped away on his most recent shadowy task. Maybe it was that last time in Hux’s bed that did it, or the time in his refresher, the two of them indulging in a shared shower with actual water. Or maybe it was—

Hux shakes himself mentally. There’s no point in getting nostalgic. The details are unimportant. What matters is the result, and what it means for him going forward.

Eight weeks. He’s no expert on human reproduction, but he thinks that leaves about thirty weeks until he delivers, give or take. Resistance leadership may well put him on trial before then, but he doubts they would execute him before his child is born. They probably fancy themselves too dignified for something like that, too civilized.

It would never have stopped Hux. It’s a weakness in the Resistance, one that he can exploit.

Before, when he thought he was bluffing, he had only hoped to buy himself a little time to formulate an escape plan—a few weeks, maybe even a couple of months. Now he has the better part of a standard year.

And he’ll need it. Looking around at his cell, Hux knows that nobody will come for him. He is important to the First Order, but not irreplaceable. That’s the whole point of the chain of command: If one part breaks down, the machine keeps working.

Help isn’t coming. If Hux gets out of this, it will have to be his own doing.

 

\--

 

The concept was dreadful: two bitter rivals, usually tearing at each other like a pair of fighting dogs locked in the same cage, snarling to hide their mutual attraction, and finally succumbing to their baser instincts. It was the worst kind of holodrama cliché.

Hux couldn’t believe he was living in it.

“This cannot happen again,” he told Ren, when it had been going on for a month. He was perched on the edge of his bed, sweat still cooling on his skin, looking at the heap of clothes on the floor in dismay—Hux’s own uniform, and the many layers of Ren’s robes. Their clothes were hopelessly entangled, shed and dropped and forgotten in their haste to get at each other’s skin.

The mattress shifted as Ren sat up. “Why not?”

“It’s unseemly,” Hux said, refusing to look back at Ren. He’d been meaning to say this for weeks, since the very first time, but somehow, he never quite got the words out. He had to be firm now, and put an end to it. He rattles off his reasons. “Not to mention, it’s against regulation. Fraternization. You may be outside the chain of command, technically, but somehow, I doubt the Supreme Leader would see it—”

He broke off when Ren pressed himself against his back, skin on skin, both of them still slightly tacky with sweat. Ren reached over to turn Hux’s head, and then kissed him, slowly, with his mouth open. For a moment, Hux’s mind went wondrously blank, all of his focus on the lips moving against his, the calloused fingers cupping his jaw. He didn’t lean into the kiss, exactly, but he didn’t pull away.

In the end, Ren was the one who finally drew back, just far enough that Hux could see him clearly. He looked a mess, his dark hair in damp disarray, ruddy marks blooming along the pale skin of his neck and shoulder. An absolutely ravished mess. “Why can’t we continue?” Ren asked gravely. “Tell me again.”

It took Hux a moment to remember what he’d been talking about. Then he cleared his throat. “It’s undignified,” he managed at last. Ren’s mouth was centimeters away, red and wet and needful. Hux tipped his head forward, just a little, like a moon caught in a strange orbit. Their mouths met again. “Completely inappropriate. Self-indulgent—”

“Shameless,” Ren agreed, between kisses. “Hedonistic—”

“It’s— _ah_ —beneath me,” Hux said, breathlessly, as he let Ren lay him out on the bed again, on the rumpled sheets.

Ren climbed on top of him. The weight of his body was familiar by now, pleasant, in a way Hux had never known before. He liked the way it felt to be pinned down in this way. It was a kind of gravity.

“A man of your station,” Ren said, and his eyes were like black holes, devouring. “Letting me have you like this. It’s unthinkable.”

Hux made a noise of agreement, even as he pushed himself up to get at Ren’s mouth.

Until a few weeks ago, it really had been unthinkable. If someone had told Hux on the day he met Kylo Ren that they would one day find themselves in bed together, Hux would’ve had them jettisoned from the airlock. And yet, here he was again: letting Ren slide a skillful hand between his legs, where Hux was still open for him. Here he was, hooking his leg around Ren’s waist, arching up to suck and bite at Ren’s throat, his jaw, his lips. Here they were: breathing raggedly, bodies sliding together in an inexorable rhythm.

For the second time that night, they collapsed in a tangle of sweaty limbs.

When Hux shoved at Ren’s muscular shoulder, the other man rolled off him without complaint, loose-limbed and sated. They lay side by side in the dark for a long minute, catching their breath.

Hux reached for the cigarette case he kept in his bedside console and contemplated his life choices as Ren finally climbed out of bed. A shame Ren was usually covered up by those robes; he really was a magnificent specimen.

Hux had never been specifically ordered not to fraternize in this way with the master of the Knights of Ren—but only because it went without saying. If he was smart enough to command the First Order’s flagship, surely he was smart enough not to copulate with the Supreme Leader’s red right hand. Presumably, that had been Snoke’s assumption.

Obviously, Snoke had assumed wrong.

If the Supreme Leader ever found out about this nameless thing that had opened up between the two of them, Hux was confident that he would lose his command at the very least, and maybe even his life. He had understood that from the first time they crashed together, all mouths and hands and want.

He knew the risks, recited them to himself every night as he hovered at the edge of sleep. This could not happen again.

And yet, watching Ren disappear beneath the layers of his robes, Hux already knew it would.

 

\--

 

Though his situation is far from ideal, Hux soon learns that it has some advantages. He is treated with basic dignity, if not warmth, which is more than he would’ve shown the average Resistance prisoner, and infinitely more than he had expected for himself. All his essential needs are met: food, water, clean clothing, an adequate place to sleep.

He’s even been given access to a number of holobooks—mostly containing encyclopedias, out-of-date academic texts and old novels—presumably to stimulate his mind enough to keep it from unraveling. He reads them slowly, secretly glad of the distraction. He knows what extended isolation can do to a human mind.

Hux’s only interpersonal contact is when someone arrives to question him: sometimes General Organa herself, and sometimes other members of the Resistance. He can never anticipate these sessions—they’re purposely staggered, to throw him off balance. He might get three visits in a single day, from three different beings; otherwise, a week or two might pass without him ever speaking to another being.

When they come, they badger him endlessly, getting nowhere, because their technique is all wrong. In the past, Hux got spectacular results with his prisoners because he did not hesitate to do whatever was necessary to extract the information he wanted. He used every tool at his disposal, without balking. But for the time being, the Resistance can’t do the same, no matter how much they want to.

They don’t beat him, or starve him, or deny him sleep until he’s half-mad from exhaustion. They can’t leverage anyone against him, either, because he has no personal attachments—at least, none that they know about.

It’s a little gratifying for Hux to think that the Resistance leadership is probably unspeakably frustrated with the whole situation. They have a First Order general in their custody, and they can’t get anything out of him. Until he delivers, they’re at an impasse.

Of course, after that, all bets are off.

Long weeks pass, and he falls into a kind of rhythm. It’s getting harder and harder to see a way out, but he never stops searching, constantly seeking a fresh angle. But all told, most of the time, he isn’t uncomfortable. Except for when Organa pays a visit.

No matter what barbs they trade, no matter how long she probes him for information about the First Order, she always circles back around to his condition. It’s maddening. She seems to know it’s the easiest way to get under his skin.

It’s a bizarre duality: Because of this thing growing inside of him, the Resistance hasn’t killed him, tortured him, or even treated him roughly. Hux needs it to ensure his survival, but at the same time, he resents it. He hates this invasion of his body, hates it even more now that his stomach is obviously swollen. His clothes don’t really hide it anymore; they’re getting increasingly tight across the middle.

“Who is the father?” Organa asks him, from across the table, for what feels like the hundredth time.

“Irrelevant,” Hux says, as he always does. Organa is a Force user, he knows that much, and so he always makes a concerted effort not to think of the father, not to picture him at all, in case she’s lurking in his head. It’s a kind of mental guardedness, a trick he picked up from all that time spent around Ren. But, no, he can’t think of Ren—

“I disagree,” she says placidly. “We both know you’re not slithering out of this one, Hux, even if you decide to start cooperating. Prison sentence or death sentence, you won’t be around to raise that child. Would you rather have it placed with family, or with strangers in some faraway system?”

If his situation weren’t so dire, Hux would’ve laughed. What a farce.

“Woman, you are fixated,” he complains, scrubbing one hand over his jaw, which is uncharacteristically rough. He’s not allowed most grooming supplies, and a coarse red beard has grown in. Even without his regular injections—the testosterone would poison the fetus, apparently—and despite the flood of unwanted hormones his body is producing on its own, he can still grow facial hair. It’s some small miracle of biology. “Why are you so obsessed with who might’ve been in my bed?”

Organa just keeps looking at him steadily. He knows from past experience that she isn’t about to leave any time soon.

Hux heaves a sigh. “Fine. I’ll play along,” he says, irritably. “Let’s assume for one moment that I believe you have some genuine concern for my child’s well-being. Just where do you think you’ll send it? To my family, perhaps? My mother is dead. My father is senile. I have no siblings. Most of my extended family are First Order sympathizers, and the rest would never take in any child of mine. But I’m sure you knew that already—it’s why you’re asking about the father, ostensibly.” He glares across the table at her. “Really, though, General. Can you imagine that any lover of mine would meet your lofty moral standards? No, I’m sure you would like nothing more than to see my child brainwashed in your idiotic ways, as one last stab at me—”

“Just name him then, if it doesn’t matter,” Organa presses.

“Have you considered the possibility that I’ve taken so many lovers that I don’t even know the answer to your ridiculous question?” Hux flings the words at her. It’s worth a shot, at least. She already thinks he’s disgusting. Would it be such a stretch to think him hopelessly promiscuous?

She doesn’t buy it, leaning forward to peer at him with narrowed eyes. “Who are you protecting?”

Hux sits back in his chair, unsettled by her piercing gaze, unwilling to admit it. “No one,” he says.

“A lie. I can feel it.”

He barely blinks, though in the back of his mind, he’s considering her Force sensitivity again. He doesn’t know if she’s anything like Ren, in terms of power. Ren could usually tell when people were lying to him. He never seemed to notice when Hux lied to him, though—or maybe he just never let on that he knew.

“If you think for one moment that I am intimidated or impressed by your parlor tricks—” Hux begins, indignantly, but she cuts him off.

“I’m not in your head,” Organa says, and he almost believes her. “I wouldn’t violate you like that, you or anyone else. But in this case, I don’t need to. I can sense the way your pulse kicks up whenever I ask about the father, the way your breathing changes. It’s subtle, but it’s there.” She gives him an appraising look. “He must be very important to you, whoever he is.”

Hux swallows, hard, willing his heartbeat to slow. If she knew who had fathered his child, she would drop the pretense of compassion in a heartbeat. Surely she would never allow the spawn of Kylo Ren to be loosed upon an unsuspecting galaxy. Better she should think Hux had an affair with another officer, or even a tryst on some backwater planet while he was on leave. Just so long as she doesn’t know the child is Ren’s.

“I have nothing to say on the matter,” Hux tells her. “Nor will I ever.”

A thin line appears between her eyebrows. “We’ll see about that, General.”

 

\--

 

The worst thing about Hux’s condition is the inevitability of it all. Not so long ago, he commanded a fearsome armada, destroyed an entire system, but he has no power over what is happening to him now. He can do nothing. He’s a captive in his own body as much as he is a captive of the Resistance.

He’s growing rounder by the day, and increasingly uncomfortable. The pain in his back is nearly constant. He’s putting on weight in places he’d never thought he would again, the shape of him changing in ways that he despises. His body seems all too eager to use the genetic blueprints it had stowed away for this very purpose, despite all of Hux’s intentions. It feels like a betrayal.

He is always careful with his comportment, even when he’s alone. Maybe especially when he’s alone. Hux knows he’s being monitored constantly. He never forgets that the Resistance sees and hears everything that happens in this cell, and so he grits his teeth and appears as calm and dignified as his regrettable condition allows.

Inside, though, he silently curses Kylo Ren—and curses himself for his own carelessness. What a fool he was, reckless as a cadet. He knew better. If he was going to surrender to his baser urges, he should’ve at least used a barrier.

Hux is never permitted to leave his cell. Even his routine medical exams are conducted here, the steely-eyed doctor wheeling in whatever equipment she needs. He wonders if his very presence on this base is a secret, strictly need-to-know. In fact, he wonders how many know of his capture at all. It’s certainly in the best interest of the Resistance to tightly control that information—the fewer who know Hux’s location and status, the smaller the chance of a rescue attempt.

The most important question is what’s really going on outside. His only information about the war comes from the Resistance interrogators. They tell him about how badly things are going for his side, even show him holovids of battles and clips from news coverage—not that Hux trusts any information that comes from the Resistance. He knows propaganda when he sees it; the First Order certainly produced enough of it, half of which he approved personally.

More than anything else, Hux wonders what has become of Ren, even though he hates himself a little more each time Ren crosses his mind. It’s a weakness inside him, his attachment to Ren, a cavity hollowing him out. Nobody ever mentions Ren, though, and Hux knows better than to betray himself by asking.

The pregnancy is progressing normally, the doctor has informed him, but that’s another thing he doesn’t ask about. It wouldn’t do to appear overly interested. Whenever he undergoes a scan, he doesn’t look at the display, just keeps his eyes trained on the ceiling and waits for it to be over.

Hux is no fool. It makes more sense not to get attached to the thing inside him, and to appear suitably detached in the eyes of the Resistance, as well. If they think it doesn’t matter to him, they won’t bother trying to leverage it against him someday.

He’s doing well on that front: As far as the Resistance is concerned, Hux views his condition solely as a means of escaping a swift and brutal execution. And, well—they’re not wrong.

Considering how carefully locked-down the Resistance has kept him so far, he knows that his best chance for escape will come when he’s moved to another facility. He doubts that will happen any time before he delivers, if it happens at all.

But even if he successfully escapes, the child can’t possibly come with him. No matter how Hux plays it out in his mind, no matter how many variables he considers, there is simply no scenario in which he keeps the child.

Nobody else is coming for him. His own life has to take priority, the way it always has. As such, he refuses to consider the child in his potential plans; it would only complicate things.

It’s in moments like these that his mind inevitably turns to Ren. Sometimes, Hux can’t help but wonder what Ren would make of this. The logical part of him figures that Ren would find the whole business as deeply unappealing as Hux does. Another part of him whispers that he can’t be sure what Ren would’ve thought about a child, because they never discussed it.

Theirs wasn’t that kind of relationship. It was never meant to be—and yet, here it is. The irrefutable evidence of what the two of them shared is developing inside of Hux’s body.

It’s a relief, almost, to know that he will never have to discuss this with Ren.

 

\--

 

“You shouldn’t smoke in bed,” Ren said, propping himself up on one elbow. He was lounging in Hux’s bed, having barely stirred from the spot where, until a minute ago, Hux had been enthusiastically riding him into the mattress. In the low light, Ren’s eyes looked deceptively dark. The sheet tangled around his long legs did nothing to conceal his modesty.

Not that he had any modesty left, really, where Hux was concerned. By now, they had seen and touched and thoroughly explored every inch of each other.

Instead of answering, Hux took another deep drag. The only thing he relished more than the feeling of Ren’s length inside of him was his traditional post-orgasm smoke. In fact, the only reason he’d climbed out of Ren’s lap once they both climaxed was to fetch the cigarette case. “I might listen to that, if you were my wife,” he said, blowing a thin stream of smoke. “But as it is, I’ll smoke where I please.”

It was a bad habit, the smoking, but at least it was his only vice. Well, he thought, with an idle glance at Ren—maybe not his _only_ one. The way he saw it, he might as well indulge in both at the same time. It was a more efficient use of his time.

Usually, Ren took his leave after Hux finished his cigarette. He’d never once had to kick Ren out; shockingly, the man never overstayed his welcome. They both knew how this worked: sex, cigarette, separate ways until the next time.

In public, nothing had changed between them. They did not suddenly agree on all subjects because they were sleeping together. If anything, Hux thought, their animosity had heightened, intensified, when they were out there on the ship. He couldn’t say exactly why—whether they were both overcompensating to hide their affair, or whether these secret, potentially-disastrous acts of lust had made them hyper-aware of each other. Perhaps it was a combination of both.

They still had their spats on the bridge, about battle strategies, about allocation of resources, about how many Stormtroopers Ren would be allotted for any given expedition. Ren still flew into his violent rages—though they did seem to be fewer in frequency—and later, Hux had to fiddle with the budget to cover the repair costs.

All of that happened outside Hux’s quarters. But in here was a little world that contained just the two of them.

Hux had fond memories of his past lovers, though most of those memories had a sting in them, a little pain to temper the pleasure. In his academy days, the fellow cadet who’d been Hux’s first everything died in a freak training accident. A few years later, at the beginning of his career, his admittedly ill-conceived affair with a married superior officer ended abruptly when Hux was assigned to a different Star Destroyer. There were others—not many, not often, but enough. In his personal life, he didn’t need much.

For the last few years, though, ever since his promotion to general, his bed had been empty. He assured himself it was because his responsibilities were too great, his time too valuable to waste on seeking out and entertaining new lovers.

In reality, he knew it had more to do with his rank and reputation than anything else. Even if there was someone out there who still wanted to touch him, no one dared. He had thought, perhaps, that no one would ever touch him again.

And then there was Kylo Ren.

In all of Hux’s past affairs, he had presented a carefully-cultivated version of himself—a slightly different variation for each partner, whatever was needed to maintain the illusion of normalcy, to maintain desire and get whatever it was that he wanted or needed. He suspected that everyone did the same, to varying degrees: showed only their best selves. Surely everyone lied to their lovers.

But now, for the first time in Hux’s adult life, there was no need. Here in his darkened rooms, he’d learned that there was nothing he could do, nothing he could reveal about himself, that would frighten or disgust Ren. There was no past action too cruel, no desire too depraved, no dream too unnerving. Ren accepted it all without question—because he was a killer and a liar, too. He was every bit as monstrous as Hux.

They understood each other, and in that understanding, they came to a kind of peace.

Hux looked back at Ren, lounging naked in his bed, watching him smoke with an open and undisguised familiarity. He didn’t know what to say.

“What are you thinking?” Ren asked suddenly.

The back of Hux’s neck prickled with embarrassment, though he wasn’t sure why. His mouth felt oddly dry. “I thought you could read minds.”

“Not yours,” Ren said, and for some reason, Hux felt the words in his chest. “Never yours. So you’ll have to tell me.”

“No, I don’t.” Hux brought the cigarette to his mouth again, almost nervously, only to find that he’d smoked it down to the filter.

As he stubbed the cigarette butt out on the ashtray on top of the bedside console, he was aware of Ren moving, sitting up. That was their routine, after all, their unspoken agreement: When Hux finished his smoke, Ren slipped away, like he’d never been here at all.

Before Ren could get out of bed, Hux lit another cigarette.

Ren paused for a moment, studying him. And then, taking it for the invitation that it was, he lay back down.

 

\--

 

In the dream, Hux is his old self: clean-shaven, regulation haircut, his body entirely his own. He’s walking with Ren, the two of them pacing the edges of the site that had been chosen for Starkiller Base. The hard crust of snow glitters in the clear morning light, almost brightly enough to sting Hux’s eyes, and the sky is a sheer and endless white.

Hux had done this many times, in the early days before construction began, though Ren had never accompanied him. He had liked to survey the site in person. The planet was a blank slate then, all snow and silence, but he could see the potential. From the beginning, he could see his glorious machine as it would be. He hadn’t known back then, could never have imagined—

The landscape is more desolate now than it had been in reality. Here, in the dream, Hux and Ren are completely alone, the only two beings on this little world.

“How could this have happened?” Ren’s voice is almost accusing, like Hux has betrayed him somehow. Because this isn’t really happening, he isn’t wearing that stupid helmet, and his dark hair is blowing in the cold wind.

It’s a dream, so Hux doesn’t have to ask what he means. He just knows, the same way that dream-Ren knows about his regrettable condition. “In the ordinary way,” he says, somewhat defensive. It’s easy to fall back into the habit of sniping at Ren. “I assumed that part would be obvious. You ought to remember. You were there—”

Ren doesn’t let him finish. His shoulders are taut, his mouth worked into a frown. “You said you don’t have a cycle. You said—”

“I know what I said,” Hux says harshly. His breath blooms like smoke. “And I meant it. If I’d thought it was possible, I would’ve taken precautions. Better yet, I would never have gone to bed with you in the first place. You think I wanted this?”

A tense, humming silence. The only sound is the wind.

“You never told me,” Ren says finally. He sounds a little sullen now.

“I never realized.”

“But would you have told me, if you had?”

“No,” Hux says. He’s only dreaming, so there is no reason to lie. “I would’ve terminated it, and never said a word. It wouldn’t have mattered, before.”

“It matters now?”

“It’s keeping me alive, for the time being. And—”

Ren pauses. “And?”

“And it keeps me company,” Hux admits, shrugging. He glances away for a moment to hide the expression on his face. “Of a sort.”

“Who do you think he’ll look like?” Ren asks suddenly. His eyes are dark and bright. He isn’t smiling, not quite, but Hux gets the feeling that he might, if provoked. “More like you, or more like me?”

“Who says it’s a boy?” Hux challenges, because it’s only a dream, and there’s no danger in saying these things. “And with any luck, it will look nothing like you. Your ears are unfortunate enough, to say nothing of your nose—”

His voice fails when Ren smiles. He’s caught off-guard by the sight of Ren’s mouth: unfairly red against the white landscape. He remembers how soft that mouth can be, how warm, only for him. He remembers nights when Ren spent hours sucking bruises into Hux’s pale skin, working his way lower and lower, all the way down—

“You should sleep, Armitage,” Ren tells him, and Hux bristles a little at the way Ren says his name. He can’t remember the last time someone called him _Armitage_ quite like that—easy, familiar, intimate. Maybe no one else ever has.

“I _am_ sleeping,” Hux says sourly.

“Then dream of something else,” Ren says. “Think of what you want to name the baby.”

“Ren, you don’t—” Hux begins, but he breaks off when the wind picks up. Light glances off the snow, blinding—

For a moment, when he startles awake—sprawled on his side, because he’s much too big to sleep on his back anymore—Hux is disoriented, unsure of where he is. Then his darkened cell swims into focus, and it all comes back: that awful emptiness that hollows him out when he thinks of Starkiller, the heartsickness that’s unlike anything else he’s ever known.

And then he feels something else: restless movement inside of him. Hux presses his lips together in annoyance. It picks the most inconvenient times to move around, such as when he’s trying to sleep. Sometimes, it’s so forceful, so insistent, that it wakes him up.

In the beginning, it was a kind of bubbling sensation, the merest flutters, easy enough to ignore. Now that he’s past thirty weeks, it’s unmistakable. He can’t overlook it anymore, can’t downplay the reality of the situation. The thing inside of him is undoubtedly alive—and before long, it will be _outside_ of him. The thought is overwhelming.

Hux lies still for a long minute, willing the movement to stop. Instead, the interloper just kicks him again. Of course it does.

Grimacing, he smoothes one hand over his rounded stomach, like the little trespasser can be reasoned with. He catches himself midway through the motion, his hand splayed over the swell. He doesn’t do this, never acknowledges it in such a way. It’s in keeping with his plan of detachment.

Another kick, this one strong enough that he feels it under his palm, as well as inside. That brings him up short, his heart beating a funny rhythm. It’s absurd, but for a second, it had felt to him almost like the thing inside him—the baby, he thinks dimly, Ren had called it a baby in the dream—had responded to him. Like it knew he was here.

 _It keeps me company,_ he had admitted to Ren, out there in the snowy dreamscape, where nothing was real. Now that he’s awake, he can write it off as nonsense. He can pretend he’s never had such a thought, if he wants.

But it has its own pulse, a little heart beating somewhere beneath Hux’s. It often moves around when he speaks, almost as if it recognizes the sound of his voice, or maybe just the vibration. It even hiccups sometimes: repeated staccato movements. He can’t rationalize all of that away.

“I can’t believe I let you do this to me,” Hux mutters, thinking of Ren. He holds the image of Ren in his mind as he lies there in the dark, rubbing slow circles into his belly, until the movement inside finally calms and he falls back asleep.

 

\--

 

Kylo Ren stood in Hux’s refresher, stripped to the waist, his back to the mirror. The outer layers of his robe were pooled on the floor around his feet, and his helmet had been discarded by the sink. He was craning his neck, apparently trying to tend to a jagged, nasty-looking wound on his back. The wound itself was near the inside of his shoulder blade, a difficult spot to reach.

Hux wasn’t shocked to find Ren in his quarters like this, after two standard weeks of separation. Ren let himself in as a matter of routine; he knew the override code to open Hux’s door. (In fact, Hux was the one who gave him the code. They never spoke of it again.)

For a moment, Hux watched in silence from the doorway. He didn’t bother to ask if the mission from which Ren had just returned was successful. If anything of consequence to Hux had happened, Ren would tell him.

Ren’s presence here wasn’t much of a clue. When Ren failed, he came to Hux for mindless physical relief, a way to distract himself. He came to Hux when he succeeded, too, taking his pleasure as a reward for doing the Supreme Leader’s bidding.

Hux would be lying if he claimed he hadn’t fallen into a similar habit—inviting Ren to his bed to commemorate every victory and every defeat, no matter how minor. Lately, it seemed like they were finding any excuse to touch.

He knew he should be troubled by that. He should nip it in the bud. But he hadn’t yet.

“You should have that seen to in medbay,” Hux said, in a disapproving tone.

“It’s not that serious.” Ren’s voice was very slightly strained. He struggled to find a better angle, swabbing ineffectually at his own shoulder with a wad of bloodstained gauze. Ren’s hands were big and unwieldy, the hands of a warrior, not a healer.

“Oh, for pity’s sake,” Hux said at last, with more venom than was probably necessary. “If you won’t go to medbay, at least sit down.” When Ren didn’t move, just looked at him with a peculiar, almost blank expression, Hux snapped his fingers sharply. “Don’t just _stare_ at me like that, you ridiculous creature. Move!”

He didn’t wait to see if his order was followed, just went to the other room to retrieve the medical kit that came standard in every officer’s suite. He could’ve summoned a droid for this task, he supposed, but there were some things that he preferred to do himself.

When he came back to the refresher, Ren had lowered himself onto the closed toilet lid. He sat hunched forward, his head bowed, sweaty hair hiding his face.

Hux paused in the doorway, momentarily struck by the sight of him: his broad, muscular back, miles of pale skin, specked with moles, smeared with his own red blood. Under the harsh white light, Ren looked remarkably vulnerable, laid bare. It meant something, Hux knew, that he was privy to this moment. He took a slow breath and stepped into the refresher.

He set the kit on the counter by the sink, unbuttoned his cuffs, and rolled his sleeves up to his elbows. He gave his hands a brief, brisk wash in the sink, and then decided against putting on gloves. He was clean enough already—and besides, that weak part of him wanted to feel Ren’s skin.

“You know what you’re doing?” Ren asked, doubtfully, without looking up at him. There was a weariness in his voice.

“Of course I do.” Hux knelt on the cold floor beside the toilet. He was trained in basic field medicine, of course—he prided himself on competence in all areas. This close, he could smell Ren’s skin: blood and smoke and sweat. “I don’t suppose I have to warn you that this will sting.”

In the moment before he began, Hux was tempted to make it hurt. Any other night, he really might’ve, just to show that he could, that he still had teeth where Ren was concerned. But somehow, kneeling there, he found that he didn’t want to.

Instead, Hux swabbed at the wound carefully, cleaning away the blood with a gentleness that surprised even him. He saw now that the wound obviously hadn’t come from a blaster. If anything, it looked like it had come from a conventional blade. Hux wondered how anyone had gotten close enough to Ren to stab him.

Ren didn’t flinch through the whole process, nor did he ever cry out. Sometimes, the muscles in his back twitched, but that was his only concession to pain. That had always fascinated Hux: how Ren was both explosive and withdrawn, both volatile and self-contained, from one moment to the next.

Finally, Hux closed the wound with a row of neat sutures and taped a bandage over it. He laid his hand on Ren’s back then, along the curve of his ribcage. He stayed like that for a long minute, kneeling, feeling the steady rise and fall of the other man’s breaths.

At length, he withdrew his hand and stood. He said nothing, just slipped out into the bedroom and called for lights at ten percent.

He removed his uniform piece by piece, calmly folding each article and setting it aside, as he would on any other night. By the time Ren wandered out of the refresher, still wearing only his leggings, Hux was down to his black regulation underwear.

Ren padded silently across the room, eased close to Hux from behind, pressed himself along Hux’s back. Hux sank back against Ren on instinct, savoring the warmth of him, the solid, familiar lines of his body. They stood there like that for what felt like a long time, not moving, just leaning against each other.

It was funny, almost, how Hux never noticed how much he had missed Ren while he was away until he came back.

When Ren dropped his head to mouth at Hux’s neck, Hux pushed him away, with a lighter touch than he could’ve used. “Not tonight, you beast,” he said, reproachfully, as if he could make up for his earlier gentleness. “I won’t have you pulling your stitches and bleeding all over my sheets. You’ll have to control your urges.”

Ren’s mouth twitched against Hux’s bare skin. “As long as you promise to do the same, General.”

Hux refused to dignify that with a response. He just climbed into bed—but Ren didn’t join him under the cool, clean sheets. He remained standing beside the bed, half in shadow, looking as uncertain as Hux had ever seen him. A long moment passed.

Hux had never known anything like what the two of them shared in secret. He’d never had someone waiting for him, never had someone to wait for. He’d never had someone to reach for in the coldest hours of the night cycle, half-asleep and longing for something he couldn’t name. But he had it now. How unlikely, how bizarre, that he should find it with Kylo Ren.

It was nothing less than he deserved, he thought. And at the same time, he couldn’t remember a time when he’d truly wanted anything else. If he wanted, he thought, he could have more. But he would have to reach for it himself.

“Well, then,” Hux said. All of a sudden, looking up at Ren, he could feel the heavy thudding of his own pulse through his whole body. “Come to bed, Kylo.”

For a second, Ren didn’t move. The look on his face was almost questioning. Hesitation was written in every line of his body, and Hux could feel it, too. They’d never done this before: fallen asleep together, spent the whole night in the same bed, without even the pretext of sex. It was new territory.

Quieter, so there could be no mistake, Hux beckoned again, “Kylo. Come to bed.”

Ren peeled off his leggings, his movements careful and stiff, like he hurt everywhere. Then the mattress dipped as he slid into bed beside Hux.

He still smelled of salt and copper, and now faintly of antiseptic, as well. Hux should’ve made him take a shower first, he thought dimly—but Ren was here now, at last, and Hux wasn’t about to kick him about of bed. Instead, he settled against Ren’s chest, let Ren drape an arm over him, holding them together.

 

\--

 

“Good,” says the droid, in a calm, mechanical voice that Hux never found at all soothing. It’s a medidroid, a common model, the kind with a serene, minimalist face and limbs covered in synthetic rubber skin. “You’re doing very well.”

Hux grinds his teeth. The droid is just spitting programmed phrases, he knows that, and yet he wants to destroy it, the way Ren would, in a fit of pique.

He’s been laboring for the better part of eighteen hours. Somehow, he’d thought it wouldn’t take this long, that he would pass through this process with the same dignity and composure with which he did everything else. And yet here he is, breathing hard, his legs folded up to his chest, sweat beading on his forehead and pooling at the base of his spine. He feels disgusting.

 _I can_ _’t,_ he wants to say, as the droid encourages him to push again. His eyes are screwed shut in pain. He’s exhausted, and he feels like he’s going to tear in half. _I can_ _’t, I can’t, it’s too much—_

To his surprise, he was actually offered an epidural, but he’d refused. It would’ve been like admitting weakness, admitting that the pain was greater than him. And besides, he doesn’t relish the thought of his lower half being paralyzed, even temporarily. Instead, he had resolved to bear the pain. He’s earned it.

If only he’d never spread his legs for Kylo Ren. If only he’d used a barrier. If only he’d never let himself get captured. If only he’d done a thousand things differently. All of this is his own fault, the product of his own carelessness.

And so he has to endure this pain, like a punishment.

Another contraction twists through him, and he forces himself to push, groaning and huffing through it. He would’ve screamed, if it weren’t for the pair of armed guards posted outside the door. He won’t give anyone the satisfaction of hearing him cry out.

Hux is still surprised that he was actually moved from his cell when he went into labor; up to that point, he had assumed that he would be forced to deliver there. But instead, he was transferred to this small, gray room tucked away in some forgotten corner of the medbay. One of his wrists was immediately cuffed to the bedrail—an unnecessary precaution, he thought, all things considered.

Except for the two medical droids—the one peering between his legs, and the smaller one beside the bed, monitoring his vitals—he’s alone. If something goes horribly awry, he supposes a sentient doctor will be summoned. But for now, he’s attended only by the droids.

“Very good,” the droid chirps. “One more push—”

One more. Just one more. It doesn’t sound like much, after all he’s endured so far, but for a terrible moment, he’s not sure he can do it. He’s nauseated, his whole body shaking. He hates the idea that this damnable process, arguably among the most natural functions in the galaxy, might defeat him.

It seems to take a year for the next contraction to come. When it finally does, he forces himself to bear down. Every muscle in his body is tight and trembling. He’s pushing so hard that he can feel the blood vessels constricting in his face, so hard that he sees spots of light behind his closed eyelids, like bursting suns. He actually does scream this time, he can’t help it, but the sound is muffled by the roar of blood in his ears.

He pushes and pushes, the universe shrinking to a white-hot center of pain—and then, suddenly, the terrible pressure is gone.

For a moment, the absence of pain is such a relief that he thinks he’ll fall into it: pass out and disappear, into blackness, into space without stars.

A high, thin wailing fills the room. The sound grabs him, snapping him back to attention. His limbs feel like water as he tries to sit up.

He catches a glimpse as it’s lifted in the droid’s rubbery hands: a chubby, dark-haired thing with pale, splotchy skin.

And then it’s gone—wrapped in a white cloth and whisked out of the room by the droid, handed off to someone outside. Hux stares after it, his heartbeat echoing strangely in his ears.

He will never see it again. He already knows that. They’ll never let him. And so he lets himself slump backward into the narrow bed, boneless and spent, the harsh overhead lights burning holes in his vision.

 

\--

 

The following morning, Hux is deemed sufficiently recovered to return to his cell. No one offers him any information about the child, nor does he ask.

He doesn’t move around much, once he’s locked away again; he’s still exhausted from the birth, sore and swollen and bruised in places he didn’t even realize he could be. Even so, he barely sleeps. He lies awake in his cot, tracing the spider-web cracks in the gray stone ceiling with his eyes, his mind racing through the same thoughts until they begin to lose meaning.

He feels empty, almost—hollowed out, in a way he’d never anticipated. All that effort, all that agony, and nothing to show for it.

On the third day after the birth, Hux is lying down when General Organa enters his cell. She hasn’t paid him a visit in well over a month. He knew she would turn up again eventually, of course. The only question had been when, and what her approach would be when she finally did. Even after all these months of captivity, he doesn’t know her well enough to know quite what to anticipate. At the best of times, she’s annoyingly hard to read.

“General,” Hux says, in the lightest tone he can manage. He sits up slowly, doing his best to hide his physical discomfort as he shifts to face her. “What a surprise. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

She wastes no time on pleasantries. Instead, she perches on the edge of the chair nearest to the cot, her spine straight and her shoulders squared. Bluntly, she asks, “What is the nature of your relationship with Kylo Ren?”

Something spasms deep inside of Hux, but he doesn’t let it show on his face. “We were co-commanders of the _Finalizer_ ,” he says impassively, “reporting directly to Supreme Leader Snoke—”

“That’s not what I’m asking, and you know it,” Organa cuts across him. Her voice is oddly strained; he’s never heard her speak like this. She leans forward, just a little, eyes fixed on him. “He fathered your child.”

“Is that your newest theory?” Hux asks, raising his eyebrows. “Laughable. As if I would go to bed with such a creature.”

Organa’s mouth thins. Her eyes are dark and shiny. “We both know the truth,” she says. “I only wonder how I didn’t see it before.”

She speaks with a terrible certainty. But that’s impossible. She has no way of knowing. The only beings in the galaxy who know about their relationship are the two of them. They had been careful to keep it that way, every moment secret and stolen.

For a long minute, they stare at each other in tense silence. Organa’s eyes never leave his face. And as he studies her, he sees it: She knows. It isn’t another wild guess. Somehow, against all probability, she knows. Maybe it’s some kind of Force-related sorcery; Ren had also possessed more than his share of uncanny, impossible knowledge.

But in the end, it doesn’t really matter how she worked it out. She knows. And that changes the game.

“We had intimate relations,” Hux says at last, icily. “There. Is that what you wanted to hear? Does that satisfy your perverse interest in my private affairs?”

Organa doesn’t rise to the bait. It’s like she’d only half-heard him. “Tell me,” she says, with a strange urgency. She seems to be searching his face for something, for some answer. “Do you love him? Did you ever?”

For a second, he’s thrown. It’s an absurd question. She’s never asked him anything like that before. Then he scoffs. “Don’t be revolting, General,” he says with a sneer. “You said yourself that I’m incapable. And who could ever love a man like Kylo Ren?”

She’s shaking her head. “There must be some part of you that can still—”

“Oh, here it comes again, that mystical light-and-dark nonsense—”

“You care for your child, if nothing else,” she insists, and her words stop him cold. He feels like he’s been slapped. “I know you do, I’ve felt it—”

Hux seethes. “Stay out of my head,” he tells her, so harshly that the words scrape his throat.

Organa doesn’t even blink. “I don’t mean to intrude,” she says. “But your thoughts are very loud. I can hear you from the other side of the base. I couldn’t block you out if I tried. You haven’t stopped thinking about your baby. Haven’t stopped wondering. You’re in pain—”

“That’s your own sentimentality talking. Your own weakness. Don’t project it onto me.”

“Do you want to see her? Hold her?”

Hux says nothing for a long minute. It’s a test or a trick of some kind, it has to be. Organa is probing for weak points, the same as always. But she won’t find any. He keeps his face carefully neutral, his voice impassive. “What have you done with it?”

“She’s being cared for. We wouldn’t harm an innocent child,” Organa says, giving him a flat look. “Not even yours. We’re not like you.”

“Ah.” Hux can feel a muscle twitching in his jaw. “Finally, something we agree on.”

Organa sighs a little through her nose. “I’ll ask you again. Your relationship with Kylo Ren—”

“There was no relationship.”

“Clearly, there was enough of one to make a child—”

“A catastrophic failure of contraceptives,” Hux says crisply. “Nothing more.”

“I can have her brought to you,” Organa goes on, as if he hadn’t spoken. “But only if you ask.”

He sets his jaw. He won’t give her the satisfaction of begging her to see his own child. That will just give her something to leverage against him. “There’s no need for that,” he tells her, but his mouth is dry. “I have no desire to see it.”

Organa keeps watching him for a long minute after that, like she’s waiting for him to take it back, to admit he’s changed his mind. He meets her gaze stubbornly. And in the end, she goes.

Hux breathes a quiet sigh of relief when he’s alone again. He feels damnably off-balance in the wake of that visit, like something inside of him has shifted.

He lies back down, closes his eyes, and reminds himself that he cannot be touched by such clumsy attempts at emotional manipulation. He is Armitage Hux, a general of the First Order, and he is beyond such things.

But in the back of his mind, he can’t forget that he has a daughter.

 

\--

 

It takes three days for him to crack.

For the first time since he was captured, Hux goes to the door of his cell and calls for a guard.

They ignore him at first. The guard who finally comes regards him suspiciously, one hand on her blaster.

“No need to be so twitchy,” Hux tells her. “I have a message for your general.”

 

\--

 

Organa comes to him two full days after he sends his message. He doesn’t know if she was unavailable, or just punishing him by making him wait, like some kind of psychological warfare. It doesn’t really matter. She’s here now, standing on the other side of the cell, with a basket in her arms.

“Why did you change your mind?” Organa asks, hanging back from him.

“I thought it would be a shame to die without ever seeing it,” Hux says—and for once, he’s telling her the truth. He’s no Force user, but he has instincts, and he knows this will be over soon, one way or another. Whether he is executed by the Resistance, or he somehow survives this ordeal and lives a long life, he wants to see the child before he goes. He wants to have at least that much.

That must’ve been the right answer, because Organa nods faintly and sets the basket on the table between them. Hux edges closer, half-expecting some kind of trap or trick. But all he finds is the baby.

He used to think that all human babies looked more or less the same, but he knows right away that this one is different from all others. This one is his.

She’s awake, making small cooing sounds. Her eyes are big and dark. Her hair is dark, too, a shade lighter than true black. Of course. Hux never really expected it to be red like his. It’s simple genetics—darker traits are dominant over lighter ones. If Ren were here, he would approve.

But Ren isn’t here. And he’ll never know that this baby they accidentally made already looks so much like him. He’ll never know if she will come to inherit his unfortunate ears and aquiline nose. Neither will Hux.

He’s always understood that, deep down. As time passed, it became increasingly obvious that he can’t think his way out of this one, not alone. He can’t escape by himself. In the end, he’ll be executed, or possibly sentenced to a lifetime of back-breaking labor in some hellish spice mine, where he’ll probably be routinely beaten and raped. He’d never thought he would raise this child. It never bothered him before. He never wanted this, not for a moment. But now, looking at her…

Carefully, aware of Organa’s eyes on him, he reaches down and picks up the baby. She squirms and whimpers a little, but she doesn’t cry. Hux has never actually held a baby before, but he’s seen other people do it, enough times that he knows to support her neck and head.

It’s hard for him to fully reconcile the baby in his arms with the thing he’d felt stirring inside him these last few months. He almost can’t believe she came from him. She’s more delicate than he had dared to imagine, and somehow smaller. Why hadn’t he thought she would be so little, so completely helpless?

“I had a son,” Organa says, in a strange, quiet voice. “Once.”

“I know,” Hux hears himself say, distracted. It’s common knowledge that then-Senator Leia Organa, still widely regarded as royalty, had a child with that blasted smuggler-slash-rebel-hero, Han Solo. Hux doesn’t recall the boy’s name, though.

“His name was Ben. He was a sweet boy. Quiet. Lost in thought half the time, and tugging on my sleeve, the other half. He was—” She broke off for a moment. He hears her inhale, slowly, like she’s steeling herself. “He really never told you?”

At that, Hux glances up. “Who? I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

Organa looks as close to mystified as he’s ever seen her. But she doesn’t explain. Instead, she says, “My boy was taken from me. Just this once, I understand you. I never thought I would.”

“I don’t want your pity,” Hux says, instinctive and vicious. “I don’t need it.”

“It’s not pity,” she says, and she sounds almost sincere. For a moment, she’s quiet, just watching him. Then she says, “It’s astonishing, isn’t it? How much love you can feel for something so small. It’s enough to knock you over.”

She’s not in his head, Hux knows that, and he hates her for it, hates that she can see his weakness all over him.

“The war is almost over, General,” she says eventually. He’s always found it odd that she still gives him that title, that smidgen of respect, after everything. “The Resistance is poised to strike the final blow. You had your chance to cooperate, and you chose not to. We have no further use for you. There’s no reason to postpone the trial any longer. You will answer for what you’ve done.”

“Understood,” Hux says, because for once, there’s nothing else to say, no defiant jab. There is only the nameless baby drowsing in his arms, and the unbearable tightness in his chest, and the knowledge that this moment is the only one he’ll ever have.

And then, with a sudden, sharp clarity, he remembers that Organa knows whose child this is. Before, there was every chance that his daughter would be placed with some unsuspecting family on the other side of the galaxy, that she would grow up quietly, maybe even happily, never knowing where she’d come from, inheritor of nothing. Far from ideal, but better than the alternative.

Now, though, he doesn’t see how that can be possible. She isn’t just General Hux’s child anymore, though that was bad enough. She is Kylo Ren’s daughter, too—and Hux has no doubt that in the eyes of the Resistance, their combined blood is too dreadful a brew to let loose upon the galaxy.

Without looking up, Hux says, “It isn’t her fault that she’s mine, General. Or his. Remember that.”

She tells him, “I will.”

He almost believes her.

 

\--

 

Days pass. Hux isn’t sure how many. After he gave birth, he stopped counting, no longer seeing the point. He isn’t counting down to anything anymore. He has nothing ahead of him, and so much behind. Everything blurs together.

Still, he isn’t surprised when one day, the cell door opens and four armed guards file in—two humans, two aliens, blasters at their hips. He always knew this was coming.

Hux doesn’t rise to meet them, just watches them from the edge of his narrow bed, expressionless in a way that he sort of hopes they find infuriating. They fan out in a semicircle in front of him.

“Armitage Hux,” says one of the humans, a pale woman with a shaved head. Her eyes are blue and pitiless, practically glowing with hatred, but Hux feels nothing as he meets her gaze, neither fear nor remorse. The Resistance can do whatever they want to him—it won’t really hurt. He thinks he’s finally past that now. “You’ve imposed on us long enough. You will be tried for crimes against the galaxy. The trial date has been set. We’ve come to prepare you for transport. We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

Hux knows which she would prefer. Her whole body is tensed and primed, waiting for him to put up the barest hint of a fight. She would relish the opportunity to tackle him to the ground, kick his ribs into his lungs, maybe slam his skull against the floor a couple of times. All of these Resistance fighters would jump at the chance. Hux refuses to give them the pleasure.

Instead, he puts his hands out, palm-up, like an offering, waiting to be cuffed. One of the guards grabs his wrists, hard enough to bruise, but he doesn’t struggle as the cuffs snap into place. Then he allows himself to be yanked to his feet. Another guard circles behind him, a hulking, golden-skinned alien with a dozen glittering black eyes.

A prickle of alarm skitters up Hux’s spine when the other human guard, a brown-skinned woman, pulls out a syringe filled with some clear liquid. His whole body tenses, shoulders going taut, but the guard standing behind him grabs him around the torso, holding him in a punishing grip that forces the breath from his lungs. The third guard, a pink male Twi’lek, drops and seizes Hux’s legs. He struggles against them, fruitlessly—his body’s gone to shit over these long months, in more ways than one. He was in good condition once, but whatever muscle strength he had going into this mess has wasted away.

The blue-eyed woman clocks Hux in the face, with a closed fist, hard enough that his head snaps to the side. Before he can recover, the other woman jabs the needle into the side of his neck and shoves the plunger down.

Hux goes down, too, his knees giving out as the shot hits his bloodstream. He hears garbled voices, the words distorted beyond all meaning. Black spots eat holes in his vision, growing bigger and bigger, until he can’t see anything at all.

 

\--

 

It’s the low rumble of an engine that wakes him. He’s groggy, and it takes him a long minute to peel open his eyes. The inside of his mouth tastes sour, and there’s a dull throbbing at his temples.

Clearly, Hux is not in his cell on the Resistance base. He’s lying in a double bed that looks like it can fold into the wall. Glancing around the dim space, he takes in brushed metal walls and traction grooves on the floor. By all accounts, he appears to be in a modest cabin on a ship.

He’s not handcuffed, not restrained in any way. In fact, he’s even wearing different clothes than before: a loose-fitting tunic and dark pants, no shoes or socks. He strains his ears for any sound. Though he doesn’t detect voices or footsteps, that doesn’t mean he’s alone.

Head swimming, Hux pushes himself up onto his elbows. He stops short when he spots the bassinet near the bed. It’s anchored to the floor, presumably to keep it from tipping over with the motion of the ship.

And his baby is nestled in it, lying on her back, asleep. For a long minute, he doesn’t move, just watches in wary silence, his body tensed. He keeps waiting for something bad to happen, but it doesn’t come.

 _Well, that does it,_ Hux concludes. He’s obviously dreaming. That, or the sedative was actually a lethal injection, and he’s already dead.

But whether this is a dream or some bizarre afterlife, he sees no reason to waste the moment. 

Joints creaking, he climbs out of the bed. He lifts the baby out of the bassinet carefully, slowly, not wanting to wake her. She’s so deeply asleep that she doesn’t even stir as he settles her into the crook of his arm. For a while, he just looks down at her, like he can memorize her. He might wake up at any second, and all of this will evaporate. 

It’s utterly foreign, this feeling: wanting to hold her for as long as he can, when before, he’d thought he would be content never to look upon her. He had never planned to get attached. But he is. He’s attached, damn it all, and he doesn’t know how it happened.

Hux pads out of the cabin barefoot, carrying the baby in his arms. He’s unfamiliar with the design of this ship. It’s a light freighter by the looks of it, and an older model, certainly nothing that the First Order has ever used. But most engineers follow a similar logic in their designs, at least as far as basic layout is concerned, so it doesn’t take him long to make his way to the cockpit.

He hesitates at the open door, but only briefly. As he steps inside, he sees that the ship is in hyperspace. And if he wasn’t totally convinced that he was dreaming before, he is now—because Kylo Ren is in the pilot’s chair.

For a second, Ren appears so totally out of place and out of context that Hux almost doesn’t recognize him. He’s not wearing his usual black robes or helmet; instead, he’s dressed in inconspicuous, well-worn civilian clothes. His hair is longer than Hux remembers, twisted back in a messy knot, but even viewed from this angle, his face is the same—the unmistakable profile of his nose, the narrow dark eyes, the ruddy scar seared across his face.

“You’re not dreaming,” Ren tells him, like he just read Hux’s mind—and, knowing Ren, he probably did. He doesn’t look back at Hux as he says it, his eyes fixed on some unknown point ahead of him.

Ren’s voice is the same as before, too, and for some reason, Hux finds that almost unbearable.

 _You_ _’re here,_ he wants to say. _I thought I_ _’d never see you again. I thought I was going to die. How can you be here?_

But somehow, all that comes out is a barked, almost angry, “Where in the seven hells have you been?”

That, at least, catches Ren’s attention enough to make him look back. “I’ve been preparing to get you,” he says, in a tone that implies Hux is being deeply rude. “These things take planning. It really wasn’t as easy as I made it look. Not that you were even awake for it.”

“I’m surprised Snoke authorized the extraction,” Hux says, to cover how flustered he suddenly feels. He’s off-balance somehow, like Ren has just yanked a rug out from under him and he’s about to fall. “Especially after so long. The war must be going spectacularly badly, if he needs me that much.”

“Snoke didn’t send me.”

“Who, then?” Hux can’t think of anyone else who would’ve had the authority or the motivation to do such a thing.

“Nobody,” Ren says, with a strange sort of ease. “I sent myself.”

The words don’t quite register at first. When it finally clicks, Hux sputters. “You? You came for me, on your own? What possessed you to do that?”

Ren shrugs his broad shoulders. “You were carrying my child,” he says. “I was… obligated.”

Hux’s mouth drops open. It takes him a moment to recover from his initial surprise, but once he does, his voice is sharp. “Oh, _lovely._ You knocked me up, but at least you felt _guilty_ about it. That’s the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me—”

“You might thank me,” Ren says crisply, a small crease appearing between his dark brows. He looks like he’d expected a different reaction, but by now, Hux thinks Ren ought to know him well enough to know better.

“I might owe you my thanks, if you hadn’t been so very late,” Hux fires back. He looks down at the sleeping baby in his arms, thinking of those seemingly endless months of captivity, the claustrophobia, the unbearable uncertainty. “How did you find me? How did you know about any of this?”

“We talked about it,” Ren says easily. “You ought to remember. You were there.”

That pulls Hux up short. He thinks of the unusually clear dreams he’d had during his imprisonment, all the times he saw Ren in his sleep, particularly that talk they had in the snow—and finally, it hits him that those weren’t ordinary dreams. Ren has been in his head for months, slipping in and out like a thief.

“So you knew where I was, all along?” He almost laughs at the absurdity of it, even as his skin prickles with heat. “You knew the situation I was in, and you waited until _now_ to do something about it? How incredibly like you.”

“If I came sooner, and things went sideways, the stress could’ve caused you to miscarry or go into premature labor,” Ren says, slowly, like Hux is being particularly thick. “It was too much of a risk to your health. And besides—we both know the best time to attempt an extraction would be during transport.”

Hux has to give him that much; he’d been thinking the same thing. “You might’ve said something, at least,” he says, the heat draining out of him, leaving only a bone-deep exhaustion. He has no idea how Ren managed to snatch both him and the baby away from the Resistance, but for the moment, he’s too tired to care much about the particulars. “You might’ve told me your plans. I’m sure you could’ve.”

Ren shakes his head. “If you’d known, General Organa might’ve picked up on it. And in all honesty,” he adds, not quite looking at Hux, “I didn’t think I had to tell you. I thought you trusted me to come for you.”

“I’m not nearly so sentimental.”

“Are you sure?”

Hux opens his mouth to say something nasty, purely out of habit, but stops short when the baby begins to squirm in his arms. Their voices must’ve woken her. She’s making tiny, almost pitiful whimpering sounds, and her face is scrunched up in displeasure. Looking down at her, Hux has no idea what to do.

“Put her against your chest,” Ren suggests. “She’ll like the contact. And she’s used to the sound of your heartbeat.”

Hux glares at him for a moment, more sullen than he probably has any right to be, having just been rescued. But then again, he had been rescued very, very late. “And how do you know that—more sorcery?”

“I read it. On the HoloNet.”

“You…” Hux can’t quite imagine Kylo Ren digging around in the HoloNet for information about how to calm a fussy baby. But he must have. For a moment, Hux continues to stand there, feeling ridiculous. Then he gathers the baby against his chest and goes to sit in the co-pilot’s seat, beside Ren. He rubs her tiny back, and by and by, she calms.

“She’ll need to eat again soon,” Ren goes on. He’s looking at the baby. A moment passes, and he reaches out, across the narrow divide between the two seats, and touches her cheek, just lightly, with his bare fingers.

It occurs to Hux that he doesn’t know the first thing about how to care for an infant—and whatever Ren has been reading, he likely has no practical experience to back it up. The realization unsettles him. But humans have been doing this for millennia, he reasons. It can’t be that hard, or the species would’ve died out. If he could command the _Finalizer_ , if he could build his glorious machine, then surely he can figure this out.

Ren’s hand comes up to brush Hux’s jaw. His fingers are long and calloused and just how Hux remembers them. He leans into the touch with a sigh, lets Ren slide his fingers through his hair. It’s been so long since anyone touched him. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed this, how much he’d come to need it.

Quietly, Hux asks, “What’s our course?”

“We’re not headed to the First Order, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Ren says. “I’m a traitor. I defected shortly after your capture. As for you, High Command—what’s left of it, anyway—is convinced you talked.”

“I never did.”

“I know that. They know it, too. But they’re on their last legs, and they want someone to blame for the losses they’ve suffered in the last few months.”

“The situation is that bad?” Hux asks, in a low voice. He’s still absently running his hand over the baby’s back. She seems to have fallen asleep again, her cheek pressed against his chest.

“Worse. The war’s just about over. It’s a waiting game now, that’s all.”

“I see.” Hux would’ve thought he would be devastated at such news, that he would feel an immediate and deep sense of loss, or anger, or grief. He would’ve thought he would feel _something_. But in this moment, he feels—numb. Like it isn’t quite real and can’t quite touch him. Maybe that’s the exhaustion speaking, or the long months of imprisonment. Maybe it will hit him later, like a blaster bolt. For now, he doesn’t think about it. “Tell me you have some semblance of a plan, then. Half the galaxy wants us dead. I’d prefer not to wing it, like you’re so fond of doing.” 

“Thought you’d say that.” Ren hums thoughtfully. He lowers his hand, settles it on Hux’s thigh, and Hux lets him. “People disappear all the time in the Outer Rim. It’s easy. You change your name, maybe your face, and you’re gone. Nobody knows what I look like in the first place, so that’s not a problem. You can grow a beard, keep your hair longer, and no one will look twice at you. No more General Hux.”

“That’s your grand plan, is it?” Hux makes an effort to sound only a little condescending. “Eke out a living on a random backwater planet, with an infant?”

He doesn’t mean to say that last part, not really—but there it is, hanging in the air between them. He’s astonished by how easily the words slipped out, how he’s already taking the baby into account. Already, he is consumed by her, in a way he’d never thought possible, in a way that ought to have been beneath him.

“We wouldn’t be destitute, if that’s your concern,” Ren says. “You’re an engineer by training. You can repair ships, and so can I—”

Hux frowns. “Since when can you repair ships?”

“You don’t know everything about me,” Ren tells him. “You only think you do. The point is, there’s no shortage of work for anyone with mechanical skills. We could work together. Fix ships together.”

“We’d kill each other in a week.”

“Unless we didn’t.” Ren gives Hux’s thigh a brief, meaningful squeeze.

All at once, Hux realizes that Ren has been thinking about this for a long time. Months, probably. Maybe even the whole length of Hux’s captivity. He’s been planning what they would do once they were free of the Resistance and the war was done—where they’d go, how they would survive. And it’s obvious now that Ren has got it in his head that they’ll live together, the three of them, like the galaxy’s most dysfunctional family. He has no idea how to cope with this new, inexplicably sentimental version of Kylo Ren.

He tries to imagine it: making a home with Kylo Ren on some unknown planet, raising the baby together, working side-by-side in a dusty shipyard every day and sharing a bed every night. It makes a pretty picture, sure, but he can’t realistically envision a peaceful, domestic life for the two of them. In fact, it’s much easier for him to imagine an ugly one: shouting, breaking things, probably hitting each other, the baby wailing in the background.

Put them in the same place and sooner or later, they will clash. It’s inevitable. It’s just their way.

But they have also been effective co-commanders, Hux reminds himself, despite their spats and disagreements. All those public displays of animosity helped to camouflage their private indulgences. He knows things would be different if they lived anonymously on some distant world, with no need to hide their relationship. He’s just unsure of what would change, whether this strange and volatile connection between them is likely to improve or deteriorate.

All he knows for sure is that they’ve known each other all this time, and they haven’t killed each other yet. Maybe they can learn to live together the way ordinary people do. At least, they can try.

“I suppose you’ll be proposing marriage next,” Hux mutters, because he doesn’t have the words for the rest of it, not yet. When Ren shifts restlessly in his seat, Hux raises his eyebrows. “You can’t possibly be serious.”

“On some planets, couples are considered married upon the birth of their first child,” Ren says, defensively. He looks pointedly at the baby.

“Unless we’re headed for such a planet—and we’d better _not_ be,” Hux adds hastily, narrowing his eyes, “I don’t see how it matters.”

They fall into an uneasy silence. Hux can almost _feel_ Ren sulking.

At last, he sighs. “You do realize that you haven’t actually asked me anything, don’t you? I can’t reject a proposal that I haven’t received.”

Ren’s dark eyes gleam. “On some planets,” he says, “rescuing a man from his enemies is considered a marriage proposal.”

“Oh, enough of that,” Hux says, and Ren actually laughs, quietly. It’s a sound Hux has only heard when they’re alone together, and even then, only rarely. He’s missed it more than he realized. “I’ll take it under consideration, you ridiculous creature.”

“As you say, General.” Ren makes no effort to disguise the smugness in his voice. Hux suppresses a sigh.

This time, the silence that settles between them is more comfortable—at least, until Hux remembers something.

“Organa knows,” he says, in a low voice. “About the two of us. I don’t know how, and I don’t know who else she’s told, if anyone—but she knows. She may come looking, when the war’s done and she has more time and resources for petty revenge.”

“I’m not sure it’ll come to that,” Ren says slowly. He pauses, a muscle in his jaw twitching. He looks at Hux, at the baby, and sighs through his nose. “I should probably tell you—”

“Leave it for now,” Hux tells him, sighing. Whatever it is, he’s reasonably sure it can wait. He’s tired, and he’s had enough of talking. He would rather just sit here for a while, watching the streaks of light outside the cockpit, and ease into this strange new existence.

“Hux,” Ren says, more insistently this time. And then, with an odd clumsiness: “Armitage—”

He just shakes his head. His hand has settled on the baby’s back, and he can feel her ribcage move with each breath. “Hush,” he says quietly, looking down at her. She needs a name, he thinks—but they can discuss that later, too. There will be time. “You’ll wake the baby.”

**Author's Note:**

> because I’m too much of a lazy bum to write a big rescue/escape sequence, I contrived a way for it to happen off-screen. *waves hands mystically*
> 
> anyway, that’s it! I hope you like it, OP! I haven’t written fic in ages, so I was kind of surprised when your prompt caught my eye the way it did. I didn’t mean for it to be anywhere near this long, but it got a little out of control. I also didn’t mean for it to get so sentimental and soppy toward the end, but life is full of surprises.
> 
> (also, obligatory dark-haired kylux baby, because all the ones I’ve seen in fic have been redheads. and as weak as I am for red hair, it would be super genetically unlikely, and I wanted at least one thing in this fic to be somewhat realistic.)
> 
>  **the sequel to this fic is live!** and you can read it right here: ["Trust Me to Take You Home"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7770124)
> 
> you can read the companion fic, which shows Leia's side of the story, here: ["The Patron Saint of Lost Causes"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7898929)
> 
> this is an ongoing series. if you want to know when any new installments go live, the best thing to do would probably be to subscribe to the series, which you can do here: ["I Don't Want Love" (series)](http://archiveofourown.org/series/490429)
> 
> send me your questions/complaints/headcanons/etc on tumblr: [saltandrockets](http://saltandrockets.tumblr.com/)


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